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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26790946">August Phonecalls</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ridiculosity/pseuds/Ridiculosity'>Ridiculosity</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Uprooted - Naomi Novik</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Agnieszka is alone in Kralia, Angst, F/M, Long-Distance Relationship, Pandemics, Phone Calls &amp; Telephones, There's a pandemic going on because why not, Uprooted Harvest Faire, together apart</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 06:26:48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,267</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26790946</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ridiculosity/pseuds/Ridiculosity</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Agnieszka slipped her shoes off and threw away her scarf. Without prompting and uninvited, a sigh left her mouth. Angry with herself, she returned to her table, sorting through her groceries. It was difficult to find supplies lately – the ration stores were only ever stocked in the beginning of the month, and she’d arrived early, fully intending to take advantage of that. She’d got fresh detergent, cleaning agents, a new notepad, a large stack of honey buns, more crisps than should be necessary, and at least three different vegetables, with a variety of fruit. She hadn’t bothered getting any tomatoes, since her tomato plant had ripened. Everything found its place in her kitchen – despite what Sarkan said, she did have a system.</p>
<p>Again, she sighed, hating the weight on her heart.</p>
<p>He hadn’t called. He’d called by proxy. He’d had Kasia check on her.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Agnieszka/The Dragon | Sarkan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>30</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>August Phonecalls</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>When Livy organised the ficathon, the theme had been Together Apart - and I'd written this for that theme. I'd also been watching a lot of Pakistani dramas at the time, and had seen Humsafar lately - which had a particularly interesting phone call. The hero had been very cruel to his lady love, and it was interesting to see him regret it. I felt the angst and I wanted to work with it, especially during the pandemic. </p>
<p>Lately I've been missing my friends and my city so much, a lot of it leaked out into what I was writing. In any case, I hope all of you enjoy this story, brief though it is. </p>
<p>I want to dedicate this to all the fun people on the Uprooted discord, who have my heart and soul! Special shoutout to Juli, Carrey, Livy, Vienna, Rachel, Anushmita and forthegenuine!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Agnieszka kicked the door open. Her toe instantly stung, and she dropped the keys that she had carefully perched on the crook of her littlest finger. She ignored it, adjusting her grip on her giant grocery bags, and shut the door again with her foot, despite her toe complaining. Her dress had a longer skirt today, and it inevitably caught on her shoes. She steadied herself, but only barely.</p>
<p>She dropped the grocery bags on her table, one of them tipping over to the side. A can rolled off, and Agnieszka cursed it quietly, hunting for it at the bottom of her table. She could hear Elena pad softly into the room, curious about the contents of the grocery bags. “Don’t even think about it, Elena,” said Agnieszka, on all fours. She swiped the dropped can up from the floor, and got up, breathing heavily. “None of it is for you,” she informed her cat in no uncertain terms. “Except maybe some of the cans of tuna.”</p>
<p>The first thing she did was open the curtains of her apartment. Some of the advantages of living on the fourth floor with no elevator in a busy capital city included the view: her apartment overlooked one of the smaller districts. It sprawled more than it climbed, with small businesses dotting the corners of the roads. Hanna’s Market was around the corner, and Agnieszka was grateful - it may have had more lofty origins, but as of now you got cheap knock-offs, and books at bargain prices.</p>
<p>Light was flooding into her apartment. She had done a good job with it, she surveyed critically. It had been tiny and a little ramshackle when she arrived, but she’d made the small cabinet area with the wooden beams separating it into a place for her plants. She’d grown vines over the vertical wooden pillar, knowing that her landlord would definitely be taking her security deposit for that. She’d thrifted furniture from Hanna’s Market, and thrown in fairylights to make sense of the mismatched chairs. Her bedroom was small but it had a colourful patchwork quilt she had sewn with Kasia during high school in Dvernik.</p>
<p>Of course they had both thought it would be for Kasia.</p>
<p>Agnieszka slipped her shoes off and threw away her scarf. Without prompting and uninvited, a sigh left her mouth. Angry with herself, she returned to her table, sorting through her groceries. It was difficult to find supplies lately – the ration stores were only ever stocked in the beginning of the month, and she’d arrived early, fully intending to take advantage of that. She’d got fresh detergent, cleaning agents, a new notepad, a large stack of honey buns, more crisps than should be necessary, and at least three different vegetables, with a variety of fruit. She hadn’t bothered getting any tomatoes, since her tomato plant had ripened. Everything found its place in her kitchen – despite what Sarkan said, she did <em>have </em>a system.</p>
<p>Again, she sighed, hating the weight on her heart.</p>
<p>He hadn’t called. He’d called by proxy. He’d had Kasia check on her.</p>
<p><em>Coward, </em>she thought to herself.</p>
<p>But she had business to do. She scratched Elena’s ears once and headed downstairs to pick out her clothes from the laundry machine. She hadn’t bothered to wear her slippers. Her building was old, and the elevator hadn’t been repaired. It was rumoured that they’d had a set of dryers once, but she had no idea when that was. She’d long ago invested in a clothesline.</p>
<p>She picked a basket of her clothes and hauled them upstairs. She felt the tendrils of autumn snake around her ankles as she did so – it was close to harvest day somewhere else. It was close to home, with pies, zhurek, and stewed apples. Sunlight had dripped through the cracks of the old building – and the thing about autumn was that the sun didn’t discriminate. Everything had the same golden hue, that made you dream of another lifetime centuries ago, in some other country – where the sun had fallen on your hair in the same way as you picked the laundry.</p>
<p>Agnieszka really <em>was </em>feeling awful, wasn’t she? When she returned to her apartment, she remedied that by performing some cantrips to put the tea on boil. Crossed her kitchen and went to the balcony in her bedroom, where her clothesline swayed with the wind.</p>
<p>She watched over the city, feeling the irresistible tug of another time – clotheslines, balconies, a city overrun by the plague, and she was all alone. She was sure a version of her had seen this story play out a long time ago. But that didn’t make it any easier.</p>
<p>Her phone tinkled. She frowned, putting her basket down.</p>
<p>Only her mother and Kasia had called lately. It was few and far in-between, but when they could, they had tried. More often, they sent emails.  </p>
<p>She went back to the living room to pick it up, nevertheless. She had to remember to sew in pockets into her dress. She wasn’t paying attention when flipped it open to answer the call, her focus entirely on her abandoned laundry. Absentmindedly, she crossed the apartment to return to the clothes-stand. She balanced it between her shoulder blade and her ear while reaching into her laundry basket. “Hello?” she said.</p>
<p>
  <em>“Agnieszka?” </em>
</p>
<p>She nearly dropped the phone in surprise. She <em>did </em>drop the shirt she had been in the process of spreading out.</p>
<p>“<em>Sarkan</em>?”</p>
<p><em>“No need to sound so surprised,”</em> he said, his voice dry.</p>
<p>“Excuse me, I should have expected this call,” said Agnieszka, glaring at Kralia in his absence. “Since you called me every day for three months.”</p>
<p>Oddly enough, he was quiet. She shifted her phone from one ear to another.</p>
<p>“Well?” she asked, cross. “Aren’t you going to say something?”</p>
<p>
  <em>“I’m sorry.”</em>
</p>
<p>That <em>did </em>surprise her.</p>
<p>“For what?” she asked, determined to be angry. “For leaving me here? For refusing to call me? For not speaking to me even while you were here? For asking <em>Kasia</em> how I was doing when I was sick instead of calling me?”</p>
<p>The bitterness of months of silence was bubbling up haphazardly. Of what he had said when he had left, of how small he had made her feel. They hadn’t even been dating, not really – just seeing each other in a research capacity – but that gave him no right – it gave him <em>no </em>right to behave the way he had.</p>
<p><em>“All of that,”</em> he said. His voice sounded raspy.</p>
<p>She felt like she’d had the wind knocked out of her. The wind rustled. The weather had no business being beautiful in the middle of a plague, Agnieszka had always thought.</p>
<p>It had no business being beautiful in the middle of heartbreak either, and that’s what it felt like was happening to her right now. She had never really demanded a lot from him, but he had become so far away in the last few months that she had felt small for the very little she had taken from him. It felt like she had cheated him from the time they had spent together. True, they had spent a lot of time being cross with each other, arguing the principles of magic, or fighting the merits and demerits of tending to tomato plants – but it had – it had <em>meant </em>something to her.</p>
<p>“Where are you?” she asked finally.</p>
<p>
  <em>“In… Dvernik.”</em>
</p>
<p>It was another stab through her heart. She couldn’t go home – not while it was contested territory, not while all her friends were inches away from the Green Plague, while the Wood Witch had lead the attack into her village, her town, her world. She had delayed her tickets, wondering when he would return, and then all trains back home had been cancelled in the wake of the plague. Sarkan had all but left her here.</p>
<p>She should have left. She should have taken the first train home, especially since her time at the university had ended. And she’d never really belonged there to begin with: Kasia may have been overlooked because she wasn’t magical like Agnieszka, but no one had <em>understood </em>Agnieszka’s magic. It was only with the grace of Sarkan’s training <em>before </em>university and in Dvernik that she had been able to get through her exams. She had been understood more at home, where her magic came in handy – where she would do it unconsciously, while baking peach turnovers. It wasn’t as if she hated the city: she liked the way the Kralia spread – the roads, emerging one from another, like water. But in Dvernik, the hills were carefully nestled close by, the mountains towering over her. It was like a missing limb – Sarkan, Kasia, her mother.</p>
<p>“How is everyone?” she asked, a lump in her throat.</p>
<p><em>“They’re alright,”</em> he said. <em>“All of your rustic friends are fine. Kasia has been helping me and Alosha lead some attacks against the Walkers.”</em></p>
<p>Her heart jumped at Kasia’s mention. “Is she alright?” she asked, neutrally.</p>
<p><em>“Yes,”</em> he said, but he hesitated.</p>
<p>“What’s wrong with her, Sarkan?”</p>
<p>
  <em>“She’s going again tonight. This time with Alosha.”</em>
</p>
<p>Agnieszka paused. The wind floated over the city. Her hair fluttered.</p>
<p>“Why are you calling me, Sarkan?” she asked finally.</p>
<p>
  <em>“We wanted to try using the summoning again, Alosha thinks it would be –”</em>
</p>
<p>“No,” she said, walking inside from the balcony. “Why are you calling me?”</p>
<p>In the shade of her bedroom, where they’d spent so many evenings together, the question lingered.</p>
<p><em>“I…”</em> he took a breath, from the other end of the phone. If she really concentrated, she could feel it. <em>“Look, Dvernik, I wanted to apologise.”</em></p>
<p>“You did that,” she pointed out.</p>
<p><em>“Not for leaving you,”</em> he said. <em>“I was – I was unkind when I left. More than a little rude, and very hurtful.”</em></p>
<p>She paused again, letting this information sink in. She sat on her bed, and sighed. And sighed.</p>
<p>“What made you angry, Sarkan?” she asked, finally. “You were… fine. And then all that anger. Where did it come from? What did I do?”</p>
<p><em>“You didn’t – you didn’t do anything, Dvernik,”</em> he said, and he sounded pained. <em>“I was an idiot –”</em></p>
<p>“Nothing new there –”</p>
<p>
  <em>“Very funny.”</em>
</p>
<p>“I know,” she finished.</p>
<p>He laughed, but again he sounded like he was struggling. <em>“You’ll laugh.”</em></p>
<p>“I will laugh anyway,” she promised him, folding her legs under her.</p>
<p>
  <em>“I was jealous.”</em>
</p>
<p>She forgot she had to react. Distantly, the kettle whistled from her kitchen.</p>
<p>She got up from the bed. “What?”</p>
<p><em>“You heard me, Dvernik,”</em> he snarled.</p>
<p>“Oh I heard you,” she said, striding to her kitchen to turn off her stove. “How about you <em>explain </em>before I lord it over you for the rest of our very long lives.”</p>
<p>
  <em>“You really are a piece of work.”</em>
</p>
<p>It hurt more when he spoke like that – she could picture him raking his fingers through his hair, squinting his eyes and frowning at the sky.</p>
<p>“I’ve been told,” she said, holding back her feelings. She poured her tea out into a cup and turned to lean against the counter and sip it from the mug, her phone in her other hand. “Which boy had the poor luck to be on your bad side?”</p>
<p><em>“It wasn’t a boy,” </em>he said, an edge to his voice. <em>“I mean, that Frederick is really </em>nothing<em> –”</em></p>
<p>“Really?” she demanded, almost spilling some tea. “<em>Frederick?” </em></p>
<p>
  <em>“I really couldn’t care less about him.”</em>
</p>
<p>“I can see that.”</p>
<p><em>“Oh for </em>heaven’s<em> sake, Nieshka.”</em></p>
<p>God, it was good to hear him say her name after so many months.</p>
<p>She bit back a smile. “Alright, since it wasn’t Frederick, what was it?”</p>
<p><em>“I would say something, if you let me,”</em> he said. His voice had the quality of old arguments in it. <em>“Look, Dvernik – I’d just begun to feel like a supplementary part of your life. I hate to put facts and evidence in front of you, Agnieszka, but you never seem to fight with Frederick as much as you do with me. Like you didn’t really need me to have fun when you had all your other friends. I mean I am older than you, by at least four years –”</em></p>
<p>“Oh, be <em>quiet,” </em>snapped Agnieszka.</p>
<p>The silence was a string between them, from one phone, across miles of distance. A memory – brittle, delicate, but strong nonetheless. She put her mug of tea down, crossed one ankle under another, and thought her way through her words.</p>
<p>“Sarkan, I hate to put facts in front of you,” she said, “but who am I supposed to argue with if not you?”</p>
<p>He was quiet, perhaps also thinking through his words.</p>
<p>
  <em>“Come home, Agnieszka.”</em>
</p>
<p>It was said so quietly, she might even have missed it. Half a second of vulnerability, of good sense, of earnestness, so gently pressed into the phone.</p>
<p>“You had to pick this time to have a lover’s spat, didn’t you?” she asked, allowing the fondness to tinge the corners of her voice. “It had to be in the middle of a plague, where I am stranded here, away from all of you – leaving half my life behind. And now you chose to miss me.”</p>
<p><em>“I’ve arranged for you to come,” </em>he said. <em>“Alosha and I made a case for needing you here. We need your magic.”</em></p>
<p>“Do you?”</p>
<p>Another long silence. Then: <em>“Yes, I need you here.” </em></p>
<p>The wind rustled again. Her laundry was done, she’d just restocked, and she had half a life here as well.</p>
<p>That was alright. She was going home. She’d pack better, since she had stocked well. It was August and she was going home.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I love reviews as always!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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